G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra GameReview

Share.

Knowing not to buy this game is half the battle.

By Hilary Goldstein

I grew up in the '80s and owned more than a hundred G.I. Joes. I was obsessed for the better part of my childhood with the action figures. Needless to say, I watched the show as if it held the secrets to the universe. So when G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra feature film was announced, naturally I vomited on myself. Nothing good can come from dredging up '80s nostalgia. What's next, bringing back Molly Ringwald's awkward dance moves from The Breakfast Club? What was worse, I knew that a summer feature meant new toys (that were lesser versions of my '80s collection), some form of fast food joint tie-in, and a new videogame. Cartoon-to-movie translations don't have a great track record for quality, but attempts at cartoon-to-movie-to-game translations fare even worse.

Still, I held out hope that the folks at EA could come up with something at least decent. They did not. G.I. Joe is an unattractive, repetitive and humorless videogame with only a few bright moments.

The core idea for G.I. Joe is sound. Create a modern-day version of Contra with the Joes as the central figures. The first issue with this is that EA is hampered by the feature film. The movie strips away the unique outfits of the Joes and so the game has some very bland looking character models. Gone is what made G.I. Joe so memorable for kids of the '80s. The personality just isn't there. The characters look boring, as do the environments (snow level, jungle level, desert level, lava level, bored-out-of-my-mind level).

The gameplay is simple. Move forward through linear levels, hold down the trigger and shoot everything in your path. Like Contra, there are some tough moments that require you to dodge incoming fire or risk death. Unlike Contra, it's just not very fun after the first hour. Destroying the same enemies, conquering the same obstacles and running through the similar levels gets old. G.I. Joe is a lengthy game and will probably take about eight hours for most people to finish. But I wish it was half that length, because it gets bogged down by its repetitive structure.

Often the G.I. Joe game seems trapped by the ideas put forth in the new movie. Case in point: the Accelerator Suits, which are a major feature in the film. When you've killed enough bad guys, you just have to hit a button and activate the suit. The suit makes every character look the same and gives each identical attacks. So if you thought the personalities were already being muted, just wait until they are fully stripped bare by these stupid suits.

EA has thrown in some of the vehicles from the old toyline including HISS tanks and the Trouble Bubbles, which are welcome additions. You also get to drive a number of Joe vehicles. But instead of having the sensation of driving a Warthog in Halo, it feels as clumsy as if you were steering one of your old toys by hand. Part of the problem is the static camera, which is an issue on foot but tends to be more troublesome once in a vehicle.

While the PS3 and PS2 versions are bad, the PSP version is even worse. Co-op has been removed, as well as all the voice acting, some of the music and what little fun there was to be had. Even the sound effects from the console version were replaced with obnoxious versions of laser fire and explosions.

Playing solo, you can switch back and forth between characters with the tap of a button. This becomes a necessary survival skill. G.I. Joe features a regenerative health system that recovers quickly if you use cover (what's the fun in that?) and slowly if you play out in the open like a normal person. On casual difficulty, dead characters instantly respawn. On medium, you recover a downed hero at the checkpoint (most levels have three). And on hard, once someone dies, they stay dead through the rest of the level. Though it is marketed as a game for a general audience, G.I. Joe is surprisingly unforgiving. I never want to shift to "easy" difficulty, but for me, medium stopped being fun halfway through the game. The first rule of game design: You never want your game to stop being fun.